Commission urges governments to embrace potential of big data
Neelie Kroes © European Commission

Commission urges governments to embrace potential of big data

The European Commission has called on national governments to “wake up to the big data revolution”. Data collection and exploitation is a growing phenomenon in response to industry and grassroots demands.

Commission Vice-President, responsible for the Digital Agenda, Neelie Kroes said: “”It’s about time we focus on the positive aspects of big data. Big data sounds negative and scary, and for the most part it isn’t. Leaders need to embrace big data.”

The Commission said that the main problems of big data identified in public consultations are a lack of cross-border co-ordination, insufficient infrastructure and funding opportunities, a shortage of data experts and related skills, and a fragmented and overly complex legal environment.

In order to solve these issues, the Commission proposed a big data public private partnership to fund big data ideas, in areas such as personalised medicine and food logistics, as well as the creation of an open data incubator within Horizon 2020 to help SMEs set up supply chains based on data and use cloud computing more.

New rules on data ownership and liability of data provision for data gathered via the Internet of Things and the mapping of data standards to identify potential gaps were also proposed.

In addition, it was suggested that a series of Supercomputing Centres of Excellence to increase the number of skilled data workers in Europe are established and a network of data processing facilities in different member states be created.

The Commission said it will continue to expand investment in 5G technology through international agreements, such as the agreement with South Korea, whilst The Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs and the ‘Opening Up Education’ initiative are intended to plug the skills gap.